posted 06-17-99 12:28 PM ET     

Is this really worth it? Until you get clean reactors you probably have to spend 1 mineral in support. I know that you can 'free up' your city workers to be specialists and have supply crawlers work the fields and mines.

Also, does a supply crawler have to go to the resource, fill up and return to the city and unload the resource it fetched. If so this could take a few turns.

posted 06-17-99 03:28 PM ET            

I always use crawlers to truck back minerals from a mine/road combination, even if it is in a bases production radius. This will free up a citizen for growth or as a specialist.

As a matter of fact, I usually have a couple of bases that are crawler producers. They mostly make crawlers all game.

To you first question, "Is this really worth it?"

Yes my friend, yes, it's worth it.

posted 06-17-99 04:37 PM ET         

While your crawlers are running around, they don't do you any good. What you want to do is send them to a square (preferably terraformed) and hit 'o' to have them return resources to their home city. Once you do that, they will sit there and your city will get the resource type you select.

Common uses are:
- Build a borehole outside city limits & return the 6 energy or minerals without ecodamage (except for the mineral ecodamage)
- Make a field of mirrors/collectors on high ground and put crawlers on each square.
- Make foil crawlers and put them on tidal harnesses.
- Put it on a Rocky/Mine/Road square (producing only minerals anyway) inside city limits and use the freed citizen as a specialist. (suggested earlier)

posted 06-17-99 07:34 PM ET            

When you start averaging 10-12 crawlers per base, you move to Triple A.

To get to the majors you have to learn the fine points of pop booms and golden ages. Lots of good players sell these two short.

"Its the ecomony, stupid". Bill Clinton line, but it applies to SMAC.

posted 06-17-99 07:45 PM ET            

With WP your formers can do all the fancy terraforming (boreholes and echelon mirrors) long before your opponant can and then when Industrial Automation? comes you can build loads of supply crawlers and already have good squares to put them on!

Under certain circumstances a crawler can send 8+ energe per turn before SP and facility bonus' are added

posted 06-17-99 08:03 PM ET         

Their only drawback is if you use them inside a base radius they can only develop one resource, whereas citizens can get all three.

In a couple of games I've had over 200 crawlers in action.

(In the One City Challenge of course you must use crawlers. In Velociryx win he had over 50 supplying his one city alone)

posted 06-18-99 11:15 AM ET         

I played PK last game and really liked the golden ages I got.

It looks like a whole new part of the game to learn.

posted 06-20-99 09:33 PM ET            

JAMiAM

posted 06-21-99 12:15 PM ET            

Don't thank me, thank cousLee. In our Weizen pbem game, he's got at least a half a dozen working terrain around his bases. I sent my fleet down to blast his terrain improvements apart and most of his prime stuff is being worked by crawlers. Then I remembered all of the times when, in SP, the AI would send some cruiser down to blast my terrain improvements. I would send out a former to repair the improvements and the stupid AI would spend the next 20 turns attacking my former, never killing it, but not damageing the terrain underneath it and leaving the rest of the land alone.

Just wait till I get airpower, though. Bye, bye crawlers!

posted 06-21-99 01:39 PM ET            

You are, of course, right on that one. But, in our game, unless he probes me or my ally, he'll be at least 20 years behind me in getting airpower. You can bet the farm that I'll use that window of opportunity to its fullest.

posted 06-22-99 05:28 AM ET         

As soon as you discover Industrial Automation, you should immediately start building SCs in all of your bases as long as they have the basic infrastructure working (Recycling Tanks, 1-2 formers, defensive/police units). Plant LOTS of forests w/ roads near your bases, and let your SCs convoy minerals there. Forget about rocky squares at first, though mining them may be useful after you've discovered EcoEng. Build the road before the forest, since it usually takes one more turn to build a road in a square already with forest. Do not build just one or two crawlers; keep building it until your base is producing at least 13-15 minerals a turn. Until that stage, forget about facilities like Children's Creche or Network Node (for non-UoP factions), though you may build formers and colony pods if needed, and if you're playing free market (for factions that are not police-oriented), you may want to hurry Rec Commons before you get the drone-countering SPs. Don't stop building SCs completely even when you're producing over 15 minerals a turn and any further will cause ecodamage; remember SCs can be used for nutrients and energy, and of course for SPs as well.

When you do build a facility, hurry production as much as possible save the first 10 minerals; if you're short in energy credits, it might be better to build the quick-returning SCs instead, and only build the more expensive facility when you can hurry it. When you hurry facilities, make sure you pay an amount so that at most 10 minerals are carried over to the next production. You may also want to hurry crawlers (make the full payment) when there are 10 or fewer minerals remaining if you're producing no more than 10 minerals a turn, especially if (but not only if) it will take more than one turn remaining to complete. If there are more than 10 minerals remaining and if your mineral production is just short of completing the SC in one turn, you may want to hurry production so that it is just enough to complete in one turn, but you'll need to use a calculator in this case (payment needed = amount for full payment * minerals needed / minerals remaining, rounded up). The same advice applies to other units (especially colony pods).

When you found a new base, remember you can change a SC's home from another base to the new base; it is faster to build SCs for a new base from a developed base than from the new base itself. Also remember a SC can convoy after expending all of its movement point (even though the control switches to another unit): just go back to the SC and left-click on it, then press "O", the convoy manual will pop up. Try to maximize crawler production as much as possible, and avoid "idle turns". To move SCs efficiently, use "chain movement" by activating existing SCs: for example, say location A is 3 squares from a base, and location B is 3 squares from location A and 6 squares from the base, to move a new SC from the base to B, if you have a SC working in A, activate it and move it to B (and convoy there), and move the SC from the base to A (and convoy there). To make sure that moving SCs are not idle, you may also want to change worker allocation for bases (from the base screen). This is especially important in the early stages of the game. It is quite a lot of micromanagement, but it definitely pays off in the long run.

To make the best use out of SCs, when you want to build a SP do not assign a base to collect minerals for it. Instead, build SCs in the base where you want to build the SP. The base where you want to build the SP should have as many forest squares w/ roads as possible within 3 squares of the base. When you do build the SP, build it in one or two turns, using the SCs that have been convoying resources near the base, and cash in the SCs only during the last turn. For a cost 200 SP, you need 6 SCs; for a cost 300 SP, you need 9 or 10 SCs. Of course, as you complete the SP your other bases should have been producing new SCs to fill in the vacancy. Use "chain movement" (described above) to get the new SCs to work in those squares. A few turns later, you'll be ready for another SP. Never use energy credits to hurry SPs, it is always cheaper to hurry SCs instead (as long as you have accumulated 10 minerals for each SC).

posted 06-22-99 06:00 AM ET            

I couldn't have worded it better. Thorough analysys, and sound tactics. I'd like to stress that foresting a tile is fast and you can convoy then 2 minerals from it, but when you get to Hybrid forests you should consider if possible to have (new) bases to exploit that tiles to get all the 3 mixed resources from it.

Some (peaceful) comments to Jeff Chandler:
"Maybe it's a better tactic to keep you crawlers working and use energy credits to hurry SP's. Once a crawler is built and working it will continue to supply resources until the end of the game. If you use one to hurry a SP then that's the end of it and you have to build another, i.e. you're getting a very low return on investment."

Each mineral of an SP costs 4 credits to hurry (and 8ec during lot more than only the initial 10 minerals)! There are more efficient ways. Hurry an SP only if you're in a real hurry.

You have to do the maths well. With standard settings a simple crawler is worth 30M, if he convoys 2M/turn he repays the investment after 15 turns. If you can afford to wait, it's worth. IF. As Victor pointed out, you can combine the tactics, using the so-said zero-based budgeting: you should evaluate the benefits of 2 choices only looking to their future value, disregarding the past investments. Thus after a crawler has convoyed good minerals for some years, you should only count if you need more the 30M it can give you NOW vs. the M it could convoy in the FUTURE.
Consider that maybe you could roun out of convenient tile to harvest with crawlers, so it's a strategic choice: less expansion, more crawlers, depends also on your style.

posted 08-30-99 08:08 AM ET            

Which faction is more likely to have Orbital Defence Pods up? The faction with more research and production, or the one with less?

Which faction is more likely to be able to afford masses of Planet Busters before the others have discovered or deployed ODPs?

By the time an enemy launches a PB at you, your core bases will have workers on all surrounding squares (because workers harvest all three resources on a square), and sent their supply transports on to the outer bases that need them.

So if the enemy targets your STs, then your core bases are safe.

The only exception is if you're lagging so badly by the time rival factions complete their PBs, that your core bases are still puny.

But that only happens if you haven't been using lots of STs.